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The first time they slept together everything was normal, and afterward Faith laughed at the worries she had nursed. Charlie was only the second white man she had ever dated. The first was in high school: During her senior year she fooled around with a British exchange student out of curiosity and boredom and because he asked and mostly to scandalize Mother. But Faith didn’t sleep with that guy. She kissed him a few times and pressed against him in the dark but she never let him run his clammy hands over her breasts and she never, ever thought about touching his penis, although he was nice enough and very funny, with weak green eyes and wild brown hair and lips like thin slivers of raw fish. That’s what Faith used to think about when he kissed her: the catfish her mother bought whole and cleaned at the kitchen sink. It was Faith’s job to wrap the heads in newspaper and carry them out to the garbage can. She always imagined she could feel those cloudy fish eyes staring at her in reproach.
Charlie’s lips were thin, too, but Faith liked them. She liked most things about Charlie, his smile, his slippery blond hair. She liked the way he looked at her, the way his gray eyes ranged over her face. She liked that he played guitar (she had never learned an instrument but always wanted to) and that he spoke French, as she aspired to do, and that he loved Ellison and Hemingway and that he had no interest in football or beer. Most of all Faith liked the easily discernible fact that Charlie found her both extraordinary and not. She loved that; it drew her to him like a serious piece of mojo working. Charlie thought her beautiful and talented, and appreciated what she had to say about things, unlike Jerry, her last boyfriend, who had been inordinately concerned about the state of her fingernails and the length of her thick and bushy hair. At the same time, Charlie didn’t treat her like some of the white people she knew at work, the ones who clapped her on the back and cried genius every time she wrote a sentence in which the noun and verb agreed. Charlie seemed both impressed and unimpressed.
She had met him at a book-signing party in West Philadelphia and been frighteningly riveted. They stalked one another across the floor all night, avoiding eyes, sneaking glances, until finally she saw him toss back his drink and lope her way, his tail twitching to and fro like a hopeful puppy dog.
He asked for a date. Faith hesitated; and when she saw the effect of her hesitation she hesitated some more. Finally she agreed. She gave him her number. He telephoned almost immediately. They took in a movie—she couldn’t remember which—then dined at a Thai restaurant on Eighth Street near Chinatown. They talked and laughed so loud and so long Faith forgot to wonder what all the people around them must think. He drove her home to the sounds of John Coltrane, walked her to her door, kissed her gently, promised to call.
When the telephone didn’t ring right away she was disappointed but not worried. She knew the game; the trick was to wait, to not seem impatient. Sure enough, four days later Charlie called to ask her out. They took in a Brazilian film at the art museum, then went downstairs for a giddy tango lesson. It was a young, affluent crowd, mostly white, the kind of liberal-thinking people who in five years would sneak guiltily to the suburbs but for now reveled in the madness of city life. Everyone skidded and laughed and mugged on the dance floor to the sensuously thick music, and they grinned at each other and mopped their brows and said out loud what a handsome, tall, muscular couple Faith and Charlie made.
Over the new few weeks Faith came to see that a dating game with a white man was still a dating game. They went out together, talked wittily, laughed sexily, presented one another their best selves. Then they’d ignore one another for a few days to prove they could and then go out again. But she was having fun with Charlie. There was something about him, a smell, a look, that pulled her toward him. At the end of each date she wound up pressing against him in his car, on the sidewalk outside her apartment building, in the bright but empty hallway outside her door. She even let him into the living room once because she couldn’t stand it. They ended up on the couch for half an hour, grinding tongues and mouths until her lips were bruised and they both were moist and panting and it was either kick him out or go to bed. She kicked him out.
She always made men wait before sex; not long, just long enough to weed out the worst ones, the players and scorekeepers. Just long enough to keep herself from feeling used when and if they disappeared. She made Charlie wait even longer, checked as she was by meandering midnight thoughts about the forbidden strangeness of sex with a white man. Him and her, skin to skin, naked and warm and glistening; she couldn’t quite make the picture work. He would not be physically different, of course. He’d have the same equipment in the same amount in the same places. She did not believe, as her mother did, that white people smelled like wet dogs or were physically deficient “down there” or possessed gelid skin like the dead. It was her gut that hesitated, not her body or her mind.
Besides, Charlie made it clear he was still seeing other women.
“I have plans for this weekend and for most of next week, but maybe we could get together after that?” he said early on, when they seemed to be getting along well.
“Sure, just give me a call,” she said nonchalantly. And when he finally did telephone, she was busy, busy, gone. Which of course just made her more desirable. He called again; she was busy. He called again and again until finally she was free.
On their fifth date they went to a James Taylor concert in the park. Sitting on the lawn in the dusky evening light, drinking wine, she felt expansible. She turned to Charlie. “Let me ask you something.” The opening act began clearing the stage. All around them people swarmed and stood and called out to friends far away. “Ever dated a black woman before?”
“Nope.” Charlie answered as if he had anticipated the question. Then he grinned. “First time.”
The stage lights dimmed and a whisper of anticipation swept through the crowd.
“Another question: When we’re out together do you think about the fact that I’m black?”
Charlie looked at her. She looked back. Up front, on the darkened stage, James Taylor’s voice rang out. “No, of course not,” Charlie said. She couldn’t tell whether the tremor in his voice was shock or deception. “Do you think about the fact that I’m white?”
“All the time,” she said.
Afterward he drove her home and asked if he could come in to use the bathroom. While he was occupied, she rushed around her apartment, picking up stray dishes, hiding clothes, dimming the light. She popped a John Coltrane CD on the stereo and remembered, with horror, the jar of hair grease lurking on the bathroom sink. She imagined Charlie lifting the great green container in bafflement, sniffing it. What the hell is this? Some kind of exotic sexual lubricant? Picturing his confused expression, Faith began to laugh. White people weren’t that naive. Were they?
He exited the bathroom with a sheepish smile and said yes to the nightcap she offered. They sat on the couch and talked and talked and talked and she had no real sense of what was being said. Her tipsy brain kept focusing attention on his mouth, his lips, the sly red snake of his tongue. He trained his eyes on her, lowered his voice, ran his thumb lightly up and down her arm until she thought she might, like fine crystal, begin to hum.
“Whoa,” she said, standing with great effort. “I think we better call it a night.”
“Sure.” He stood, too, and took her face into his hands. She sighed audibly and leaned into the kiss. She was a sucker for a guy who touched her face. A guy who touched your face was really looking at you—not just clutching a pair of breasts or groping a butt. At least that was the way it felt to Faith.
He ran his hands over her neck and down to her breasts, then followed with his lips. She molded herself against him, felt her heated flesh like kneaded dough to be rolled and pressed and formed into shape. She heard him moan and noticed the music had ended. He moaned again and came back to her lips, pulled one into his mouth. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
“Mmmm,” she said.
They moved into the bedroom, dropping clothes as they went. She felt as verdant and lush as a rain forest and she wanted him, but still part of her held back, watching. She was waiting for a slip. A word. A whispered sentence that would tumble from his mouth and fracture the ground beneath her feet. She waited while he peeled off their clothes and eased them onto the bed. She waited while he circled her nipple with his tongue. She waited while he nibbled and kissed and stroked until, against her will, her hips loosened and her back arched to meet him. She waited while her body danced and Charlie moved on top of her, eyes squeezed so tight the fine blue veins in his eyelids stood out like the spine of a leaf. She waited while he eased himself inside her, while he tensed and moaned, while be began, slowly, to gallop her, while he moved faster and faster, while he cried, “Oh!” and then her name, while he came with a shudder and cry and collapsed onto her breasts, while he panted and reached out his hand to touch her face. She waited. His skin glowed blue white in the light from the security lamp outside her window. She stroked the moistness from his back.
After a few minutes he moved to her side and took her hand for a kiss.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t wait.”
“It’s okay. I never come on the first time with a guy. It takes me a while.”
“Something for me to look forward to.”
“To work forward to.” She laughed and turned onto her stomach. He leaned over her and kissed her neck.
“I love your skin,” he said. He ran his tongue down her back. “It’s so smooth. It’s like chocolate.”
“Chocolate?” She tensed. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just that it’s smooth and delicious. Don’t you like chocolate?” Charlie tapped her butt and chuckled and lay his lips against her neck. “Did that bother you? What I just said, about the chocolate? I mean, it was a stupid thing to say, it slipped out. I hope I didn’t offend you or anything.”
Faith pulled him into her arms and kissed his face, then picked up his hand and kissed it, too. It was, she noticed, the same color on both sides, the color of bread dough. She wrapped her own two-toned hand around his, wrapped her long, sable legs around his pale ones, and thought they looked like a brotherhood poster there on her bed, cobbled together, side by side, ebony and ivory together. Faith thought about saying this to Charlie, but his eyes were closed and so she closed her own and smiled to herself and floated, becalmed.
She had drifted off when she felt Charlie disengaging himself. She opened her eyes to see him rising from the bed.
“I better go home,” he said, beginning to dress. “I’ve got to work early tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah. Okay.” She had hoped he would stay the night. “Me, too.”
Faith put on a robe and walked him to her door.
“I had a great time,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“Thanks.”
Faith laughed. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s not like I fixed your car or something.”
“I just meant for the wonderful evening. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
After he left she climbed into bed, tired but exultant. She felt as if she had tiptoed her way through a minefield and made it out the other side and now she could sink into her pillows and relax. Her breathing slowed. Her mind wandered off, dancing on snowy white clouds to the sugary beat of a Paul McCartney song.
Charlie went to Chicago for ten days. While he was gone he called her twice, and though he seemed distracted both times Faith thought the calls were themselves a good sign. She left a teasing message on his answering machine on the day he was due back in town, inviting him to dinner. When he returned the call his voice was warm and seductive, as though his ardor had been only temporarily cooled by the Chicago wind.
They ate Italian that night, barely able to choke down their pasta for the tension pulling them across the table toward each other. Afterward, back at her apartment, they kissed and licked and sucked on the couch for half an hour, until Faith pulled away, breathless, and stood up and took Charlie’s hand and pulled him toward the bedroom. Charlie winced.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my shoulder. I think I pulled a muscle yesterday at the gym.” He stood in the doorway to her bedroom, rubbing his shoulder, his eyes wide in surprise at the pain like a child.
“Poor baby. Here, lie down and let me massage it for you.”
Charlie lay on his stomach. Faith straddled his butt and leaned forward to knead his back. He purred under her hands.
“That feels good,” he said. Then a moment later, “Would you really like to do something to make me feel better?” His voice sounded hesitant. Faith laughed. They were half naked on her bed. He didn’t have to ask.
“Of course,” she said leaned down to kiss him. But Charlie swung her onto her back and caught her face in his hands.
“Let me tie you up,” Charlie whispered. His normally pale face had flushed pink, but then he leaned down to kiss her hard against her mouth and when he pulled away there was a tiny white circle around his lips from the pressure. Faith thought: White people are always changing colors.
Charlie’s voice was thick. “Or you can do it to me. Tie me up and whip me.”
For a moment she heard only the inconstant sounds of the apartment dwellers around her, the noise of human beings packed into too small a space: conga music from next door, the nine-year-old upstairs as he thumped across the ceiling like a monster eager to break in. Her mind raced, in search of a reference point, and, finding none, came back to search his face. Charlie lay above her, staring down at her from a great height, as if she had fallen into a well and he did not know what to do. His face struck her as comic and so she giggled. Faith giggled and then she laughed, harder and harder. Her laughter rolled her away from Charlie on the bed.
She noticed Charlie staring across the bed at her, a smile dimming on his face. The longer she laughed the dimmer the smile, until it faded back into his skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked, finally. He had moved to the edge of the bed and sat with his legs drooped over the side, his back to her. He twisted his head around to face her as she settled down.
“Yeah! Yeah!” She gasped for air, trying to calm herself. “Must be the wine!”
“I had no idea I was this funny,” Charlie muttered. “I should be a comedian.”
“I’m sorry.” Faith panted through her chuckles, as if she were giving birth. “It just hit me wrong.”
“It wasn’t a joke,” Charlie said.
“I know.” She began to giggle again.
“I was serious.”
“I know.”
The giggles started; at the same time Charlie lurched across the bed to kiss her, hoping, she could tell, to head off a second round. “I want you,” he whispered, but the tickle of his breath on her face was hilarious. It set her off.
“Sorry!” She convulsed with laughter, curling away from him on the bed. He sat up and crossed his arms.
“Can’t say I’ve ever had this reaction before.”
“Sorry!”
“Maybe I should leave,” he said. She could tell from the pout in his voice he wanted her to stop him, to beg him to stay. But she couldn’t stop giggling.
“Maybe you should.”
He grabbed his clothes in a huff. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he said roughly and left the room.
The front door slammed and her giggles died.
Faith needed to talk to someone. Under normal circumstances she’d talk to Pauline, but Pauline wasn’t crazy about Charlie. To say she hated him would not be too strong a term, though the two had never met. Pauline was deadly opposed to crossing the color line. If she heard about this little incident it would only confirm her feelings. She’d say, “I told you so,” then get in a cab and hunt Charlie down. No, Faith couldn’t talk to Pauline. And she couldn’t talk to her mother, of course, and she couldn’t talk to any of her male friends. What she needed was a white girlfriend to ask. A white woman could put Charlie’s request into perspective. A white woman could tell her if white guys all went in for this kind of freaky shit.
He wanted to tie her up. And he wanted to be whipped. The idea, the image rolled around her mind all the next day, bumping into things, shattering her concentration, boggling her. She was alternately angry, disgusted, amused. Most of all she was perplexed. No man had ever—ever—asked her before to do such a thing. Why would Charlie ask now? Was there something about him, or something about her? Had she said something, done something to suggest she was into that stuff?
Faith tried to imagine her last boyfriend, Jerry, stretched out on her bed and trussed up like a pig. Jerry was six foot two, substantial, as thick around the middle as a tree. He was a newspaper photographer whose oft-announced goal was to quit his job and open his own studio, to escape from the soul-sucking pressure of working for the man. He pitched himself as a black prince looking for his queen, but he got antsy when he found out Faith made more money than him, and he didn’t like her to say too much at parties. He’d even bought her a copy of that book, that “guide to the black woman,” that thinly disguised piece of misogynistic crap. As a joke, he said.
She tried to imagine Jerry shackled to her bed like a slave, begging for a little humiliation while she stood over him with a whip. The image made her laugh it was so absurd; Jerry would rather eat bricks than do something like that.
On the other hand, Jerry had his own sexual tics. He was a wonderful lover, slow but not too slow, gentle but not too gentle, and from the beginning he found her turn-on points. But during one of the first few times they made love, just as she was starting to climax, Jerry grabbed a pillow and put it over her face. In her surprise and panic she kneed him in the balls; that was the end of that little party trick.
Jerry also had an annoying way of always referring to his penis as himself, in the third person. “Please take Jerry in your mouth,” he’d say as they sat making out on the couch. Or “Jerry’s hard. He wants your hand around him.” Or “Jerry wants to be inside you, baby, right now.” This kind of body-part animation wasn’t unusual for guys, she knew, but it irritated her nonetheless. Toward the end, when everything but the sex was bad, she started pointing out that these things were not literally possible, that she could not take Jerry into her mouth, he was too big. She did it just to piss him off. It worked; Jerry took Jerry and left.
But Jerry had never asked her to do something so sick, so humiliating. Nor Charles, nor Garret, nor any other black man she knew. Only Charlie. Only the second white guy she ever let near herself. She knew what she should do. She knew what Pauline would say: Cut him loose. The only problem was she liked him. She liked him a lot.
Still, by the time Charlie called, creaky-voiced and repentant, she had resolved to cut him loose.
“I miss you,” he said. “Have dinner with me.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. But she’d forgotten how alluring was the sound of his voice.
“Please. I’ve been thinking about you nonstop; I can’t get you out of my mind.”
“How unfortunate for you,” she said. But she was weakening.
“Faith,” he said. Just her name, just like that. “Faith.”
“I don’t know.”
“At least let me come over and explain,” he asked.
She let the silence build for a while, then said, “I guess I can spare a few minutes tonight.”
He arrived bearing wine and red roses and a shopping bag that smelled of lemongrass. She stood in her living room, arms folded, face set like a stone.
“Before you say anything, let me talk, okay?” Charlie laid the roses at her feet. “I’m sorry. I apologize. I just got carried away. But if I offended you, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” He pulled her into his arms, fluttered his lips against her neck. Her knees softened, and she leaned against him. Maybe she’d been too quick to judge. Maybe he hadn’t meant anything, after all. “I just got carried away,” he said. “When a man’s around you he just naturally gets certain thoughts.”
The words pierced her heart like a scalpel. A man just naturally gets certain thoughts.
He felt the change in her body and looked into her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
She felt sick. A knot seemed to have formed in her stomach. He was looking at her all wide-eyed and innocence, which only made it worse. She pulled away from him, walked to the other side of the room. “Let me ask you something, Charlie. You ever try to tie up one of your white girlfriends?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. Did you ever ask a white woman to do what you asked me to do?”
He stared at her as if she were speaking a language he could not understand. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about why you’re with me, white boy. I know what you think: black women, dirty sex.”
“I do not!”
Faith crossed her arms and smiled, though the tears were pushing up behind her eyes. “Sure, you do. I bet you couldn’t wait to tell all your friends you fucked a black girl once and it was so good. Like eating chocolate, right? You could brag about how she tied you up, how she whipped you and beat you, and then how you did the same, how you played Mr. Charlie and the slave girl all night long!”
Charlie’s face blanched and then reddened. Clear evidence, she thought, of his guilt. White people were always changing colors on you.
He whispered, “I can’t believe you think that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She glared at him for long minutes, until he dropped his hands and walked to her couch and collapsed here, shoulders drooping and face down. They were silent then, listening to the salsa music drifting under her door.
When Charlie spoke his voice trembled. “I like you. I like you a lot. Maybe, if I examined my reasons closely enough, it might have something to do with…” He let the thought trail off, then continued. “I don’t know. Okay, is that what you want to hear? I don’t know. But I do know that I like you. I like you. Isn’t that enough?”
He’d brought carrots and lettuce drenched in sweet vinegar from a favorite Vietnamese restaurant and tangy barbecued ribs from the rib joint down the street and noodles and spring rolls from the Thai place they first visited together, and, most surprising, a whole fish, wrapped in aluminum foil, baked with thyme and lemongrass, from where she did not know. After he left, Faith laid it all out on the dining room table, a cultural feast for two. She opened the wine and took a sip. California red. It was good vintage but tasted bitter in her mouth. She spit it out, looked at the food without appetite. The fish stared back with its cold and colorless eye.